The Poet of Poet Laval
writes prescriptions for sleep, listing
sonorous ingredients whose names
you only have to read before slipping
into a deep canyon descended
by way of rustling poplars, the humming
of bees in oceans of deep-colored lavender, the slap
of the waves of those oceans, and there at the bottom,
dream’s diagonal door of light and shadow, the one
you never are aware of passing through.
The poet of Poet Laval
is a useful poet, writes poems
that seed the heart you thought non-arable:
soon, stirrings, presentiments of
the wild and bright; red poppies.
The poet of Poet Laval
does not exist. Poet Laval is a village, very old,
in the north of Provence. Touched by the thought
of a village named after a poet,
I visited Poet Laval and asked after him:
who had he been, and where could I read his poems?
These questions made everyone laugh, until
a kind woman took me aside. “It’s like this”, she said,
“in Provençal, ‘poet’ means ‘mountain’”! So,
no famous writer of poems ever lived here, no favorite
son who went to Paris and became renowned,
no local troubadour, whose song about a woman’s eyes
—though she’s been under ground nine hundred years—is still
remembered. Not even one beloved in his time
for his lyrics celebrating big events: the spectacular
grape harvest, the long-delayed completion of the church,
the late birth to the lonely, childless couple.
And so I conjure a poet for this town.
In her poems—no matter what the words describe—
a window opens up: through it, the evening sky
of a summer long ago, its first stars
through the branches, the rhyming
white blossoms, whose breathed-in scent brings back
the sense that anything is possible.
All of it given back. Everything restored.
Just for the moment of reading, of course,
but the spaciousness lingers inside.
In Vermont
It is melting season here.
April, and suddenly the still
landscape is loud with voices. Not just
those of the birds, newly returned,
but water-voices: everywhere the sun
is melting ice & snow, and rivulets,
streams, waterfalls are pouring,
coursing, rushing down the mountainside.
Listen: what was mute as cloud
now sings the jostling songs of glass.
It is the tale where White Buffalo
dissolves into a chant of rain.
But what if this transformation—silent, solid
white into voiced transparency—
took over the whole countryside? What if
the birches, too, should melt
and begin ringing out like bells?
The Chinese Papercutter
The Chinese papercutter
fashions dragons with scissors
or with a knife of moon:
a fish fashioning water.
He dreams of cardinals
and finds his paper red—
the shadow of a poinsettia wing
on his design
covering it
as the appleskin’s flame
covers pale fruit.
He moves so slightly
it is as if he does not
move at all.
Motionless roses thus
arrange themselves
in vases
like hills
which at last declare their outlines
to the painter.
His is an art of patience,
devoid of disquietude:
he does not envy the silken kites
their intimacy with the wind
nor does he begrudge the flute
its ability to carve
melodies.
All Poems © Copyright Carolyn L. Tipton 2019
